{"id":58024,"date":"2025-09-09T20:28:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=58024"},"modified":"2025-09-09T20:28:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:28:25","slug":"floridas-plan-to-end-school-vaccine-mandates-wont-cover-all-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/09\/09\/floridas-plan-to-end-school-vaccine-mandates-wont-cover-all-diseases\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida’s Plan to End School Vaccine Mandates Won’t Cover All Diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u2014 Plan would not include polio or measles unless lawmakers act<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida’s plan to drop school vaccine mandates opens in a new tab or window<\/a> likely won’t take effect for 90 days and would include only chickenpox and a few other illnesses unless lawmakers decide to extend it to other diseases, like polio and measles, the state health department said Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The department responded to a request for details 4 days after Florida’s surgeon general opens in a new tab or window<\/a>, Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, said the state would become the first to make vaccinations voluntary and let families decide whether to inoculate their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a retreat from decades of public policy and research that have shown vaccines to be safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among children. Despite that evidence, the U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed deep\u00a0skepticism about vaccines opens in a new tab or window<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida’s plan would lift mandates on school vaccines, opens in a new tab or window<\/a> for hepatitis B, chickenpox, Hib influenza, and pneumococcal diseases, such as meningitis, the health department said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Department initiated the rule change on September 3, 2025, and anticipates the rule change will not be effective for approximately 90 days,” the state told\u00a0The Associated Press. The public school year in Florida started in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All other vaccinations required under Florida law to attend school “remain in place, unless updated through legislation,” including vaccines for measles, polio, diphtheria, pertussis, mumps, and tetanus, the department said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawmakers don’t meet again until January 2026, although committee meetings begin in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ladapo, appearing Sunday on CNN, repeated his message of free choice opens in a new tab or window<\/a> for childhood vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If you want them, God bless, you can have as many as you want,” he said. “And if you don’t want them, parents should have the ability and the power to decide what goes into their children’s bodies. It’s that simple.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida currently has a religious exemption opens in a new tab or window<\/a> for vaccine requirements. Vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives globally over the past 50 years, the World Health Organization reported in 2024. The majority of those were infants and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rana Alissa, MD, chair of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said making vaccines voluntary opens in a new tab or window<\/a> puts students and school staff at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the worst year for measles opens in a new tab or window<\/a> in the U.S. in more than 3 decades, with more than 1,400 cases confirmed nationwide, most of them in Texas opens in a new tab or window<\/a>, and three deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whooping cough has killed at least two babies in Louisiana and a 5-year-old in Washington state opens in a new tab or window<\/a> since winter, as it too spreads rapidly. There have been more than 19,000 cases as of Aug. 23, nearly 2,000 more than this time last year, according to preliminary CDC data opens in a new tab or window<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2014 Plan would not include polio or measles unless lawmakers act Florida’s plan to drop school vaccine mandates opens in a new tab or window likely won’t take effect for 90 days… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDlcL2ltYWdlcy02LndlYnA_Zml0PTI3MyUyQzE4NSZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IkZsb3JpZGEmIzgyMTc7cyBQbGFuIHRvIEVuZCBTY2hvb2wgVmFjY2luZSBNYW5kYXRlcyBXb24mIzgyMTc7dCBDb3ZlciBBbGwgRGlzZWFzZXMiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.-ibO7sZL11nmL6jl8PO5suM3AJqJNzI5spgvHwfxBI8MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":58025,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/images-6.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[12222],"class_list":["post-58024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-floridas-plan-to-end-school-vaccine-mandates-wont-cover-all-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58026,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58024\/revisions\/58026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}